Our Model

Mainsprings began by seeing a need: girls who had nowhere to go and no one to care for them. However, we quickly recognized that these girls and their communities would need more than just a home to break the cycles of poverty they faced.

When Mainsprings welcomed its first 7 girls in 2007, they attended the local Primary School in Kitongo where there were over 900 students and only 3 teachers. Clearly, not a lot of learning was taking place. Year after year, we noticed that both children and adults were falling ill, and even dying in our own community from preventable and treatable diseases. We observed farmers with plenty of land struggling to feed their families and survive. From these challenges, the Mainsprings model grew into our holistic approach, where we address the four most pressing needs of our rural communities.

On our 70-acre flagship campus in the village of Kitongo, Mainsprings has robust programs in all of these areas with a focus on making them sustainable and replicable. In 2016, Mainsprings also began development of a second campus in a village called Kahunda.

Mainsprings is a catalyst for change that is empowering the entire areas of Kitongo and Kahunda- and their surrounding villages- to learn what it means to live a life without extreme poverty.